The best new shows to stream in Australia this month

I came to a realisation this week while researching Big Mood, my top Stan recommendation for April. I was excited by the Millennial comedy’s cast list, which was topped by Nicola Coughlan. The Irish actor was flat-out terrific in Derry Girls (RIP) and remains my main reason for checking in on Bridgerton. Her touch where comedy and pathos intersect is masterful.

When the streaming era took off and there was a programming boom across all platforms, part of the excitement was movie stars coming to television. I mean, Meryl Streep signed on for the second season of Big Little Lies. But as much as most of those big names have delivered exemplary performances, it’s the actors who were already in television who’ve found new lanes to prominence – such as Coughlan – that I’ve come to appreciate the most.

I’m thinking of Merritt Wever (Unbelievable), Jared Harris (Foundation), and Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave). Then there’s Aisling Bea (This Way Up), Dominique Fishback (Swarm) and Charlotte Nicdao (Mythic Quest). I could keep going, but the point is if you appreciate actors there’s never been a better time to engage with the vast spectrum of their work. There are intriguing performances, offbeat performances and truly great performances on offer.

Hopefully, April’s new shows will add to that roster. It’s a month with a suitably eclectic line-up, from a no-expense-spared video game adaptation (Amazon Prime’s Fallout) to a covert tale of deceit and betrayal (Disney+’s The Veil).

Netflix

My top Netflix recommendation is Ripley (April 4).

Ever since Patricia Highsmith’s taut, tantalising psychological thriller Tom Ripley series was published, beginning with The Talented Mr Ripley in 1955, its antihero narrator Tom Ripley, a narcissistic American expatriate in Europe whose cold calculations turn deadly, has fascinated filmmakers. Over the decades the character has been played by the likes of Alain Delon, John Malkovich, Dennis Hopper and, in Anthony Minghella’s celebrated 1999 movie, Matt Damon. Ripley’s latest incarnation belongs to the Irish actor Andrew Scott, (Fleabag, All of Us Strangers), who stars in this moody limited series from leading Hollywood screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Moneyball). Shooting in gorgeous black and white tones to accentuate the menace, this tale of obsession and impersonation sticks to Highsmith’s plot but avoids the sun-drenched beauty of Minghella’s movie. Taut and tantalising once again.

Also on Netflix: In November 2019, British royal Prince Andrew gave an interview to the BBC’s Emily Maitlis about his reported friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the American financier and convicted child sex offender who had recently committed suicide, and allegations by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, that Epstein trafficked her to the British royal. It was a landmark appearance for Andrew: in turn horrifying and laughable. Scoop (April 5) is a feature film about the negotiation and execution of the interview, which led to Andrew’s withdrawal from public life, with Gillian Anderson (Sex Education) as Maitlis, Rufus Sewell (The Diplomat) as Andrew, and Billie Piper (I Hate Suzie) as producer Sam McAlister, whose book about the interview provides the drama’s source material.

After the success locally and then globally of Heartbreak High (April 11), the reboot of the 1990s high-school drama that offered a funny, flagrant vision of the contemporary Australian teenager was always going to get a second season. The equation involved for creator Hannah Carroll Chapman and her team is how quickly the new episodes got made versus how carefully; rushing the return to Hartley High could result in a familiar sophomore slump. We’ll find out if 19 months is the right length of time as the original cast returns, with Amerie Wadia (Ayesha Madon) once more the centre of controversy as a new school year begins.

March highlights: Fleet and fascinating, 3 Body Problem was a science-fiction smash, Guy Ritchie rebooted his own gangster film with a series of The Gentlemen and documentary The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnappings revealed the horror of disciplinary schools.

Binge

My top Binge recommendation is The Sympathizer (April 15).

It’s perfect timing. Two months after Robert Downey Jr wins his best supporting actor Oscar for Oppenheimer, he further showcases his polymath talents by playing multiple supporting roles in this adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The story is a paranoid 1970s drama: the mission of an unnamed north Vietnamese spy (Australian actor Hoa Xuande, Cowboy Bebop), who has been operating inside the South Vietnamese army, doesn’t end when the north wins the Vietnam War. Instead, he stays undercover and follows his commanding officer into exile in Los Angeles, going down a rabbit hole of dual identities and conflicting allegiances. If Downey playing a succession of characters doesn’t tip you off about the show’s intent, take note of co-creator and lead director Park Chan-wook. The South Korean filmmaker, responsible for Oldboy and Decision to Leave, is a master of cinematic style.

Also on Binge: Alice & Jack (April 12) is a British romantic drama about a mismatched duo who strike a spark and share a single night together, but are then drawn inexorably back to each other even as their circumstances change over the course of 15 years. Creator Victor Levin (Mad Men) is trying to capture the wondrous and wrenching, and if nothing else he’s cast the hell out of his show: Andrea Riseborough (Oblivion, The Regime) plays aloof finance executive Alice, while gentle research scientist Jack is played by Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina, The Patient). That’s a hugely promising screen pairing.

Well this is unexpected. In 2015, The Jinx (April 22) imploded the true-crime documentary. New York real estate heir Robert Durst, who had long been connected to a succession of suspicious deaths, including that of his first wife, agreed to be interviewed by filmmaker Andrew Jarecki. Over numerous interviews Durst made the case for his innocence despite disturbing evidence, but after his final sit-down and while still wearing a microphone, Durst confessed out loud. The recording got Durst arrested, and he was later sentenced to life imprisonment, where he died in 2022. How does Jarecki top that? The new season reportedly includes new interviews, unearthed material and prison calls from Durst.

March highlights: Julianne Moore was deliciously Machiavellian in the period drama Mary & George, Jimmy Savile’s monstrous crimes inspired The Reckoning, Apples Never Fall was a star-studded Liane Moriarty adaptation, while Kate Winslet went full dictator in The Regime.

Stan*

My top Stan recommendation is Big Mood (March 29).

It may be a last-minute March release, but this whip-smart comedy about the consolations and crises that can define a close friendship is too promising not to include. Building on the recent lineage of female creators who shifted the boundaries of British television – Phoebe Waller Bridge’s Fleabag, Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and Cash Carraway’s Rain Dogs – this six-part comedy from Camilla Whitehead stars Bridgerton MVP Nicola Coughlan and It’s a Sin star Lydia West as respective best friends Maggie and Eddie. Stumbling into their 30s, the former is trying to stay on top of her bipolar disorder and a flailing writing career, while the latter is trying to keep her bar from going under. Expect chaos, hard truths and laughs both genuine and uncomfortable.

Also on Stan: Natalie Dormer, who was such a memorable part of the ensemble cast in Game of Thrones as the manipulative royal wife Margaery Tyrell, takes the lead role in White Lies (April 8), a South African crime thriller about the secrets hidden inside both a family and a city. Dormer’s Edie Hansen is an investigative journalist who returns to Cape Town after her brother and his wife are brutally murdered and suspicion swiftly falls upon the slain couple’s teenage son and daughter. Expect many twists as Edie and lead detective Forty Bell (Brendon Daniels) clash over the investigation’s direction.

March highlights: The comic thriller Population 11 turned a tiny Australian township into an enduring mystery, while spy thriller Gray was a leading lady showcase for the wonderful character actor Patricia Clarkson.

Amazon Prime

My top Amazon Prime recommendation is Fallout (April 11).

Now that The Last of Us has validated prestige video game adaptations, expectations are high for Amazon’s big-budget take on the long-running post-apocalyptic action franchise where players fight to survive in the mutated remnants of America 200 years after a nuclear war. Leaning into the game’s 1950s retrofuturism, Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets) plays Lucy, a resident of the chipper, cloistered underground society the Vaults, who goes to the surface and swiftly discovers that nearly everyone and everything wants to kill and/or eat her. Those she encounters include the great Walton Goggins (Justified), who should be a riot as the Ghoul, an ornery bounty hunter with an unforgettable face. Creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner worked on Captain Marvel and Silicon Valley respectively, which should indicate the big canvas and black humour at work here.

Also on Amazon Prime: The anthology is now the format of choice in the horror genre, allowing for a clean slate but a recognisable framework and aesthetic each season. The latest example is Them (April 25), which returns for a second instalment three years after it debuted as an incantatory study of black trauma and racial prejudice that unfolds after an African American family relocates to a white neighbourhood in 1950s Los Angeles. The new episodes stay in the city of (fallen) angels, but the setting is now the 1990s and Deborah Ayorinde, who previously played a defiant mother, returns as an LAPD detective investigating the murder of a foster parent that takes in the political and the supernatural.

March highlights: Alongside the deep-space thriller Beacon 23, there were several high-profile movies in the form of Academy Award nominated satire American Fiction and Jake Gyllenhaal paying tribute to Patrick Swayze in the Road House remake.

Apple TV+

My top Apple TV+ recommendation is Sugar (April 5).

This is the most Apple TV+ show of the now many Apple TV+ shows – a huge star in Colin Farrell, top of the line production values, and an ambitious hybrid concept that many viewers probably won’t connect with. I liked Sugar, but it definitely has a specific niche appeal that reinvents the classic private-eye noir. Farrell’s John Sugar is a saintly detective who specialises in finding missing people and obsesses over golden age Hollywood movies – so much so that shots from various black and white classics are cut into the narrative. When he takes on the case of the legendary Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell), who wants his missing granddaughter found, Sugar gets a Chinatown-adjacent cast of contemporary characters and a plot that rattles his own cloudy identity. To say anything more would be a spoiler.

Also on Apple TV+: Kudos to Michael Douglas, who at the age of 79 has entered the grand historical figure stage of a screen career that stretches back to the late 1960s. In Franklin (April 12) the Wall Street and Wonder Boys star plays Benjamin Franklin, the inventor, publisher and statesman who was appointed by the fledgling government of the United States as it first ambassador to France in 1776. A period drama based on Stacey Schiff’s 2005 book, The Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, the show charts Franklin’s long-odds campaign to get France to support America in its war to throw off British rule. Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place) supports as Franklin’s grandson and aide, William, but this is a showcase for Douglas, whose Franklin is a strategist, spy, and seducer.

Apple TV+ definitely has a preference for expansive adult dramas – see above for two more – which is odd given that one of their few sitcoms, Loot (April 3), is such a delight. With the incomparable Maya Rudolph (The Good Place) headlining as Molly Wells, the newly divorced wife of a tech titan who finds herself with a fortune of $130 billion, the first season in 2022 found warmth and wit with the spiralling Molly trying to find purpose via the charitable foundation she’d previously set up and forgotten about. The second season continues the workplace comedy vibe as Molly, like her real-life equivalent Melinda Gates, tries to responsibly give her extraordinary wealth away. If you’re still missing Parks and Recreation, this is the perfect replacement.

March highlights: A highlight documentary made with empathy and unbridled humour, Steve! revealed comic legend Steve Martin, Noel Fielding shone in The Completely Made Up Adventures of Dick Turpin and Manhunt was a thorough thriller about the hunt for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.

Disney+

My top Disney+ recommendation is The Veil (April 30).

We’re watching anything that stars Elisabeth Moss, right? That’s what a television CV that includes The West Wing, Mad Men, The Handmaid’s Tale, Top of the Lake, and – some of you skipped it – Shining Girls earns you. Here she plays British spy Imogen Salter, an MI6 operative who specialises in undercover work and is assigned to shadow and befriend a target, Adilah (Yumna Marwan), who is travelling across Europe by train. That’s a classic Alfred Hitchcock concept, albeit with a 21st century war on terror update from prolific creator Steven Knight, who was previously responsible for showcasing Cillian Murphy’s icy blue eyes in Peaky Blinders and the World War II adventure SAS: Rogue Heroes. Moss spent months perfecting her British accent, so let’s get these strangers on a train introduced.

Also on Disney+: A family’s will to survive, even as they’re scattered across war-torn Europe, underpins We Were the Lucky Ones (April 17). Adapted from Georgia Hunter’s novel, which was inspired by her family’s history during World War II, the limited series charts the many risky paths taken by members of the Kurc family, Polish Jews whose lives are torn apart by Nazi Germany’s invasion and the beginnings of the Holocaust. With a cast headlined by Joey King (The Act) and Logan Lerman (Hunters), the story’s various strands include living under false identities, imprisonment and enduring icy exile, as well as the survivors’ struggle to find each other after the conflict ends.

March highlights: The biggest concert film of all time, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, came to streaming with a bonus batch of new songs.

ABC iview

My top ABC iview recommendation is White Fever (April 10).

In this madcap cultural comedy, her best friend’s bachelorette party becomes a watershed moment for Jane Thomas (creator Ra Chapman), a Korean-Australian adoptee who grew up in a country town and now finds herself being challenged as a woman whose dating history consists solely of hirsute white dudes. A party girl looking to establish her heritage, Jane tries looking for an Asian man to date – it doesn’t go well. With every episode available to binge upon release, White Fever is the latest comedy from the ABC, a genre the national broadcaster has mostly excelled at in recent years. Chapman, whose own background inspired Jane’s, is an award-winning playwright (K-Box) and actor (Wentworth) – a promising candidate to set up and star in her own show.

March highlights: Life After Life was a gripping “what if?” drama about how lives might unfold, while fans of the coruscating British police drama Happy Valley got a finale season.

SBS On Demand

My top SBS On Demand recommendation is Swift Street (April 24).

Set and shot amidst the grit and grind of Melbourne’s not-so-gentrified northern suburbs, this comical crime drama from newcomer Tig Terera is a portrait of the city’s multicultural identity where the bond between father and daughter only leads to criminal scams and brazen robbery. When Afro-punk Elsie Masalla (Tanzyn Crawford, Tiny Beautiful Things) discovers that her misfit father, Robert (Cliff Curtis, Fear the Walking Dead), is fearing for his life after defaulting on his debt to a local crime boss, they team up to illegally earn the necessary tens of thousands of dollars in the few days remaining. Expect breakneck exploits, questionable moves and an idiosyncratic take on the modern family.

March highlights: There was a free to air debut for one of the best European dramas of the last decade, the German historic thriller Babylon Berlin.

Other streamers

My top recommendation for the other streaming services is Paramount+’s Knuckles (April 27)

Sonic the Hedgehog is big business. The Japanese video game franchise about an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who boasts super-speed has spawned numerous console bestsellers since 1991, while the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movies in 2020 and 2022 topped the global box office. The intellectual property rule book demands a spin-off, hence Knuckles. It’s a six-part series about one of the game’s most beloved supporting characters, an alien red echidna introduced in the second movie as an adversary-turned-friend of Sonic’s who is voiced by Idris Elba (Hijack). The actor returns for this side project, which features the martial-minded Knuckles trying to make sense of life on Earth while training an incompetent deputy sheriff (Adam Pally, Happy Endings) and dodging villains whose motivation I suspect are superfluous to the action.

Also: To be clear, BritBox’s Tom Jones (April 11) is not a biopic of the mighty Welsh singer. The limited series is the latest adaptation of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel about the coming of age of the good-hearted title character. It’s by no means a stuffy period piece – Tony Richardson’s zesty 1963 film adaptation won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. This reimagining stars Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon) in the title role, with in-demand Australian star Sophie Wilde (Talk to Me, Boy Swallows Universe) opposite him as Tom’s love interest, Sophia Weston, who various family members are plotting to marry off to Tom’s horrid but wealthy half-brother.

March highlights: BritBox’s Obituary was a cracking Irish black comedy about a writer creating some extra work for herself, while 7plus’s The Victim was a tense, painful Scottish study of guilt and recrimination.

* Nine is the owner of Stan and this masthead.

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